Just starting a business? Trying to to launch a website for an existing business? You might be a little intimidated, not to mention overwhelmed by the options available to you. There are several different options with different pricing models, requirements, and do you need to to learn HTML or hire a web-site programmer…. Your head is about ready to explode.
FEAR NOT! Getting yourself and your business on the internet is easier than you think.
What you need for an Internet Presence
The basic elements you will need to give your business a presence on the internet are:
- An email address
- A web site
- A personalized domain name — e.g. www.yourbusinessname.com
Getting an email address and a website are easy and available more or less for free provided you do not want a personalized or custom domain name. You can have this stuff set up in minutes — literally — by going to Google, Yahoo, MSN, or Apple’s Mobile Me.
Decisions about your Business Internet Presence: the domain game
The key decision you have to make about your Internet Presence is whether you would like a custom domain or not. Would you like your email to come from yourname@companyname.com and have your website be www.companyname.com? If your answer to the preceding is “YES!” you will need a custom domain name.
Registering a domain name is easily done. You can use a domain registrar like GoDaddy.com or Network Solutions to do this. Visit the registrar’s site, search for the domain name you’d like for your business, create an account for yourself with the registrar, and voila! you have a custom domain — but wait until you have read the rest of this article. Eventually, I will have a tutorial on how to do this, but trust me, it’s pretty easy.
The next decisions you need to make regarding your site are:
- The type of website you want
- The look, and feel you want for your site
- How much time and money you want to spend
Types of Websites for your Small Business
Let’s start with the function you want your website to serve. There are five basic types to consider that can be mixed and matched as required:
- A product or services website
- A blog (a Web Log of your thoughts, ideas, etc.)
- An E-Commerce site, like Amazon or Buy.com
Most businesses need a website that present their product or services, and lets their customers know a little bit about them: who you are, product and service options, pricing, etc.
Depending on the business you are in, and particularly if you have a service business, it’s useful to have an attached blog. Blogs are a list of articles or a series of thoughts just like this one, that help people understand what you offer, as well a sense for what you are like to work with.
You may want an E-Commerce website that gives people the ability buy online as well as from your store if you have one. Additionally, an online catalog can entice people to come in to visit your store to look at items in which they are specifically interested.
The complexity of the functions you choose as well as the degree of customization you would like to have is the primary determinant of what it will cost you to get your business online.
Determining the Look and Feel For your Business Website
There are three basic types of websites that you can have:
- A static site that is coded in HTML
- A data-driven site, like a online catalog/store
- A combination of the two that’s based on a Content Management System (CMS)
Below is a quick comparison of the benefits and drawbacks of the different types of websites.
| Type of Website |
The Good Things | The Bad Things |
| Static Website | Very customizable to look the way you want it | Time consuming to setup and challenging to maintain |
| Can offer richest possible user interface experience | Relatively expensive — require time and/or tools and/or consulting | |
| Data Driven | Highly desirable fo e-commerce sites | Can be challenging for the inexperienced to maintain |
| Combination/CMS | Easy to setup template based layout | Customizing the tempates (depending on which you use) can be challenging |
| Easy to maintain | May not have as rich a graphical experience |
The Cost of Setting up your Internet Presence
Based on the preceding, the best option for small businesses — unless they are specifically interested in selling products using the web — is to use a content management system. Why? The cost of implementation and ease of use.
Content Management Systems (CMSes) are relatively easily installed, provisioned, and managed through major internet registrars and hosting service providers.
Also, Google offers FREE website hosting as well as other business applications and productivity (email and calendaring) through the Google Apps Standard Edition. Basically, using a CMS is about as difficult as typing out an email and clicking send, so hence the recommendation.
Summary
Developing an internet presence for your business is pretty easy. The biggest decisions you need to make are:
- Whether you want a personalized domain name
- How much money/effort you want to put into building your site
If you don’t want to take the time to figure out how to get the basics setup, hire a consultant to help you get started with the basics. They can then show you how to do the rest on your own. If you have the time and interest in learning the basics, it’s very satisfying to do on your own. Check around on this site, there will be other articles and tutorials on this site that help.